You might call it the “No More Jay Roberts Promotions” bill.

Roberts was chairman of the House Transportation Committee during the 2015 session, and managed to shepherd House Bill 170 through both House and Senate, and fulfilling a goal expressed by Governor Deal, Lt. Governor Cagle, and Speaker Ralston during the early days of the session. A month after the end of the session, Roberts was nominated by Governor Deal to run GDOT’s planning department, replacing Toby Carr.

Under Senate Bill 256, prefiled on Monday by Senator Josh McKoon of Columbus, an offer like Roberts had would be prohibited for two years after a legislator serves on a conference committee. From the bill’s text:

No member of the General Assembly who serves on a conference committee shall be eligible for employment in state government, other than as an elected official, for a period of 24 months immediately following such member’s service on such conference committee.

Roberts, of course, served on the conference committee that produced the final version of the bill that was voted on during the penultimate day of the 2015 session.

Good morning! School is back in session, so now the break is really over. Or it’s just beginning, depending on who you ask.

Reads!

• Earlier this month, the Washington Post political team sat down with Donald Trump and Ben Carson at each candidate’s DC-area home:
  • Trump: Interviewers described it as, “A nearly 90-minute one-man channel surf that landed on, among other topics, golf, the polls, whether he planned to drop out of the presidential race, what he’s afraid of, whether he’s a nice person, the media, the media and the media.”
  • Carson: The candidate offers proof that he’s not weak by saying, “A weak person doesn’t have all of these honorary degrees. Most people of accomplishment have one, maybe two or three honorary degrees at most. It’s the highest award that a university gives out. I have 67. That’s probably not indicative of a weak person who doesn’t get things done.”
• The New York Times overviews President Obama’s anticipated moves on gun control.
• WABE prognosticates how Atlanta’s neighborhoods will continue to evolve in 2016.
• The Wall Street Journal reports how more Americans are looking to faith-based organizations for their health insurance coverage.
• Georgia lawmakers vote now, read later. It’s tradition!
• In the AJC, Maureen Downey (from her new location on the front page of the Metro section) kindles the conversation on merit pay for teachers.
• Also from the AJC, hateful talk is protected by the first amendment. But hate talk accompanied by criminal activity is a whole other story.
• The City of Atlanta quietly made a $9 million Beltline payment to Atlanta Public Schools.
• From CityLab, one congressman wants to preserve our right to pee – freely.
• WSAV covers the pending legislative conversation about whether firefighters in Georgia should carry guns.
• The world didn’t know it needed a George Costanza-themed bar. Thank you, Australia!
• NYC CFA remains DOA.

And below the fold, if you’re willing to wait for it –

Read more

This week’s Courier Herald column:

With the dawn of the new year brings us another 40-day session of the Georgia General Assembly. Some of the process will follow a familiar routine. But there’s always a wrinkle or three to keep things fresh.

This will be the second time in recent history that qualifying for legislators will occur during session, with primaries for state and local offices to be held in May. In order for those who will stand for re-election to return to their districts and campaign (as well as be able to raise money – something prohibited when the legislature is in session), few are expecting the session to extend past the end of March.

As a bonus, Georgia will host a presidential preference primary about the time the legislature hits high gear. Presidential politics – and highly charged partisan rhetoric – will dominate the political news cycle this year. That doesn’t mean that this will be a “do nothing” legislative session. It just means that you may have to work harder to find out how legislation of substance is moving.

Education will take up a good bit of the legislative energy over the next three months. The Governor’s Commission on Education Reform has released eighty some-odd pages of recommendations to improve the return on investment state taxpayers make on K-12 students. The suggestions regarding funding reform have garnered the most headlines and perhaps signal one of the larger fights of the session. Read more

Ronnie Mabra announced today that he will not seek reelection. His reasons are below. He will be missed in the legislature for good humor, thoughtful advocacy, and sartorial splendor.

After much discussion and praying with my family, I announce that I will not seek re-election as State Representative for House District 63.  As many of you know my son, Ronald E. Mabra III (Remiii) was born in September.  Dawn and I appreciate all of the phone calls, emails, and other congratulatory messages as we welcomed our first child into this world.  Remiii’s birth has changed our lives in so many wonderful ways and as a family we are doing some restructuring.  Dawn has decided to return to school.  She has always dreamed of becoming a physician and I am very proud that she has enrolled in a Masters Program at Morehouse School of Medicine.  I am very fortunate to have a loving wife that has supported me while I was building a law practice, while I ran for public office, and as I have served the people of District 63.  It is now time I be by her side as she pursues her dreams.  This means taking an extremely active role in raising our son while she continues her education. 

Read more

A little over a month after it became known that the social security numbers, drivers license numbers and dates of birth of more than six million Georgia registered voters were sent to news organizations and political parties in what is known as the Peach Breach, a much bigger database of voter information was discovered in the wild. Databreaches.net reported that a database with 191 million records containing voter information was available publicly on the internet. After this report, public access to the database was removed.

While the information in the database didn’t include social security or drivers license numbers like the Peach Breach did, it did include dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and possibly more. Is this significant? Or as was pointed out in a tweet, is it no more than someone accidentally leaking Facebook?

A story in this morning’s New York Times tries to answer that question. In addition to talking about how voter information is aggregated and used by political campaigns, it talks about how the information can be used for less noble purposes:

Big data advocates argue that what is in most voter files is nothing more than the White Pages of a phone book augmented with party affiliation and voting history (not which candidate people voted for, but whether they voted.) But for privacy experts, that alone, especially when compiled in one place, is cause for concern.

“Simply by digitizing the data, collecting it in one place, making it freely available in one place — it’s a Christmas gift for thieves,” said Neal O’Farrell, the executive director of the Identity Theft Council. “I interviewed an identity thief, and he said credit card numbers are for chumps. It’s much easier to get caught. The cybercriminals really want to know who you are. And voter information and any kind of information that fills in all the blanks makes it easier for phishing, for social engineering, and for extortion.”

There is no doubt that this type of data has become essential to modern political campaigns. Democrats and some others use NGP/Van to aggregate voter data and enable voter contact. NationBuilder is a popular tool used by a wide variety of candidates and organizations to build support. And don’t forget that the voter data exposed in the Peach Breach except for personally identifiable information is required by Georgia law to be made available to those willing to pay a fee.

Many people, myself included, are willing to provide personal information to social media sites like Facebook in order to be able to enjoy social media. Plenty of people use a Kroger Plus Card or other shopper card to get discounts at retail while providing a wealth of personally identifiable information about what we purchase and use on a daily basis. And while the benefits can be great, there are also risks, as not only the unauthorized release of voter information but the legally required distribution of voter records shows.

On this date in 1955, General Motors became the first U.S. corporation to earn more than one billion dollars in a single year.

Peaches

• Sam Olens goes against Governor Deal.
• Religious Liberty fight rages on.
• Alcohol to blame in 25% of roadway deaths.
• Georgia facing a foster care crisis.
• Missing dog from Texas returned after being found in Georgia.

Jimmy Carter

• The War on Feral hogs – Texas.
• Sweden is saying NO to refugees.
• Fox News is #2.
• Crime rose across the board in this town but they’re still cracking down on the Second Amendment.

Sweet Tea

• Bill Cosby’s Hollywood Star will remain.
• Dyslexic? No kids for you.

Liberty Drum 

• A record year for federal regulation.
• Weed makes you want to hurt people, apparently.

DeKalb State Court Judge Dax Lopez’s nomination to the federal bench is being held up, according to Daniel Malloy in the AJC, because US Senator David Perdue, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, believes that the opinions of convicted felon DA King and professional huckster Phil Kent carry more weight than those of genuine, long-time conservatives. Lopez, by all accounts a sharp attorney with a fine legal mind, once sat on the Board of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, an organization that doesn’t support rounding up all illegal immigrants and sending them home.

While GALEO has opposed immigration restrictions and advocated for a path to citizenship, Lopez “abstained from GALEO’s policy votes and fundraising,” and resigned entirely once he was nominated to the federal bench.

From Malloy: “The judge is a Republican and a member of the conservative Federalist Society. He volunteered for Bob Barr’s successful run for Congress as a Republican in 1994. Lopez was first appointed to the Georgia bench by David Perdue’s cousin. (That would be Governor Sonny Perdue, a Republican.) And the counsel for Perdue’s Senate campaign, Josh Belinfante, served on the panel convened by the senators to vet potential nominees that sent Lopez’s name to the White House.”

That sounds like exactly the kind of conservative an organization like GALEO needs to be effective or credible. They should recruit a dozen more like Judge Lopez to their board. But GALEO isn’t Lopez. And Lopez ain’t GALEO.

Dax Lopez was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Cobb County and graduated fourth in his class at McEachern High school in Powder Springs. He graduated from Vanderbilt and Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as president of the Vanderbilt Bar Association and as an editor on a legal journal. He clerked for a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan. Read more

So completes yet another year of my Morning Reads–each one elevated every reader to a new level of greatness by coming into contact with me. You’re welcome.

“Thirteen” by Big Star. The older I get the more I appreciate #1 Record. Even though so much is about being an adolescent, you realize how frivolous and serious it was to be young.

1. For too long the Lust List has been inaccurate. Namely that I haven’t been included. Be on the right side of history and change that.
2. Be careful with how you recycle in Atlanta.
3. No, Joe Gebbia, monorails are not a good vision. 
4. Poor People in the Deep South are On their Own. 
5. “In Georgia, the state with the sharpest decline, only seven percent of poor families with children in the state receive welfare, compared with 98 percent in 1994.”
6. South Carolina realizing the high price tag of doing the right thing by deemphasizing the Confederacy. What could this mean for Georgia as we crawl into the 21st century?
7. How states, including Georgia, with growing numbers of Hispanics are doing all they can to prevent the new majority from taking over. 
8. Southern Comfort won’t die! 
9. Seriously, if Atlanta can’t support a place like SoCo, we’re no longer a Southern town.
10. Charis bookstore, a favorite haunt of PP regulars, selling its L5P home. 
11. The world’s largest sale of humans took place in Savannah–but you’d never know it. 
12. In light of our recent wacky weather, get detailed info from 100 weather monitoring stations throughout our great state here.